Cinerama Capsule 2022 – 2025 (reviews)

Starring Hubert Milkowski, Karl Bekele Steinland, and Edyta Torhan, Norwegian Dream takes us to Norway, where we meet Robert, a young Polish immigrant who has just arrived to work at a fish factory in hopes of paying off his mother’s mounting debts. Suppressing his true self to fit in with the other Poles at the factory, Robert develops feelings for Ivar, the out-and-proud son of the factory owner who also moonlights as a drag performer. As the two get to know each other, a worker’s strike breaks out, and Robert is forced to decide on his future: Will he choose financial stability or his community?

Bold, striking in its honesty and detailed in its exploration of class and culture, Hubert Milkowski’s central performance is one of power and control as this award-winning feature weaves its complex, delicate and enthralling tale.

Writer and director Sacha Polak is renowned for weaving lived experiences, natural performances, and artistic bravery into bold, raw, and brilliant stories of survival, rebirth, and challenge. In her 2020 film Dirty God, Polak explored the story of a young British woman recovering from an acid attack following domestic violence, as she introduced us to healthcare worker and part-time actor Vicky Knight from Essex, who suffered 30% burns at the age of seven in a pub fire. 

Silver Haze sees Knight and Polak reunite in a film built on Knight’s lived experience. But far from being a docudrama, Silver Haze, based initially on a mere twenty-page outline, allows the actors to build upon Knight’s experiences, weaving a powerful story of intergenerational trauma, female love, working-class struggle, and rebirth.

There are moments when Silver Haze feels bloated as it attempts to explore multiple character journeys in a story that should have centred firmly on Franky and Florence, and on the shared traumas that serve as the platform for their uneasy love. Despite this weakness, it is raw, unrestrained, and unflinching female-led storytelling that shines with honesty and realism.

Out, proud, and loud, Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse’s gloriously camp horror, Summoning Sylvia, isn’t going to win any awards. But it will win over the hearts of those who love their comedy/horror coated in glitter.

Mixing the classic haunted-house tale with meet-the-in-laws comedy and a tongue-in-cheek homage to The Conjuring franchise, Summoning Sylvia is best enjoyed with friends, nibbles, and a few alcoholic beverages. By bringing together a truly delightful ensemble — including Travis Coles, Michael Urie, Frankie Grande, Noah J. Ricketts, Troy Iwata, and Nicholas Logan — for a bewildering bachelor party, Summoning Sylvia offers us a spooky, devilishly fun weekend getaway.

However, it’s not all camp conversations, horny pizza delivery guys, eyeliner and screams. In the background, the ghost story unfolds, revealing moments of emotion before culminating in its beautiful twist. There is much to love in Taylor and Wyse’s camp creation, and you won’t find a more entertaining queer Saturday-night comedy-horror.  

Some documentaries are so personal, poetic and honest that they leave an indelible mark on all who watch them. Francesco Patierno’s documentary, based on the words of Fuani Marino, is one of those films. With a runtime of just over an hour, we are taken from Marino’s childhood to her twenties, motherhood and beyond as she explores her battle with mental health and the delicate nature of life and love.

Through her writing and diary entries, Marino challenges us to explore the uncomfortable realities of living with a mental health condition, including the actions and feelings people consider and enact as they navigate the world around them. Her words are accompanied by photos, home videos, and a stunning collection of images and film collated from the Instituto Luce film archive, all brought to life through Patierno’s exquisite and compelling style.

The intimacy on display in Wake Me Up Before Midnight is genuinely breathtaking as Marino shares her thoughts, battles and struggles through a film that shines a light on many of the uncomfortable realities of failing mental health while never losing sight of the importance of love and treatment in lighting the darkest corners of our complex minds.

In 1961, Ermanno Olmi’s Il Posto introduced us to a young Italian, Domenico, searching for a job for life. Watching Mattia Colombo and Gianluca Matarrese’s documentary ‘A Steady Job’, you could argue that little seems to have changed since 1961, particularly in Southern Italy. But the focus of Colombo and Matarrese’s lens is not the clerical world of Olmi’s film; it’s the public sector. Here, we meet the thousands of hopeful nurses bused in from across Southern Italy to take the examinations that all aspiring nurses and public-sector workers must pass to secure the steady job they dream of. However, this is no easy process for our hopeful job seekers, who compete for a limited number of positions among thousands of applicants.

Raffaele is our guide and the owner of a bus company that transports candidates between mass examinations, helping them avoid the need for expensive overnight accommodation. However, Raffaele, himself a trained nurse, is about to face his biggest challenge as the Pandemic hits and healthcare recruitment faces an unprecedented crisis. Il Posto is, at its heart, a profoundly personal road trip that explores and debates themes of opportunity, employment, inequality, and social policy in modern-day Italy.

Songs can unite us, divide us, offer us hope, allow us to dream and spark our most profound memories, happy or sad. Since the creation of the first musical instrument, possibly as long as 60,000 years ago, music has defined our hopes, dreams, aspirations, and sense of belonging and community. While some songs come and go with time, others last forever, reinventing themselves for each new generation; Bella Ciao is one of them.

Giulia Giapponesi’s fascinating documentary aims to uncover the hidden history behind a song that has become a powerful call for freedom and democracy, an anthem of protest and a reflection of Italian history and resistance. Bella Ciao takes us from the courage of young partisans during the Second World War to the music scene of the 1960s and the fight for freedom in Syria and Iraq as one song creates many stories. “Bella Ciao” is a call to action, a love letter to courage, a celebration of love, and a shining example of the intersection between music, song, and the fight for freedom. 

Ti West’s clever homage to the 60s and 70s origins of the slasher, X, paid tribute to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho, among others, as it explored the foundations and intersections of porn, horror and art. His prequel to X took a remarkably long time to reach British cinemas, mainly due to the pandemic, and sadly, this undoubtedly impacted its eventual release. But for those of us who patiently waited, Pearl is a blood-soaked, technicolour melodrama that has quickly earned a place in the Horror Hall of Fame.

Part homage to The Wizard of Oz and part love letter to melodramatic horror movies like Joan Crawford’s underrated Strait-Jacket, West’s clever dissection of Corn Belt American horror starring the indomitable Mia Goth and David Corenswet is just as intelligent in its narrative structure and artistic vision as his first outing, as he unpicks the relationship between melodrama, fantasy, rural America and horror.

For eleven-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio), a beach holiday in Turkey with her dad, Calum (Paul Mescal), marks the final summer of childhood innocence, while for her dad, the holiday coincides with his 31st birthday and the beginning of the end of everything that came before it. Many films are born from memories, taking snapshots, grainy holiday tapes and creased photos as their source, but few are filmed as a series of childhood memories. Sophie and Calum’s holiday together holds moments of love, humour, and joy, but it also harbours darker moments that Sophie didn’t know how to process at the time, but now looks back on with age and experience on her side.

Charlotte Wells’ artistically bold debut film is a stunning photographic essay on love, loss, joy, and disappointment: a mosaic of memories forever burned into celluloid. Aftersun is filmmaking at its most profound, beguiling and beautiful.

Ben (Shlomi Bertonov) and his partner (Arial Wolf) live in a diverse but often troublesome area of Tel Aviv. They take pride in their commitment to diversity and liberal ideals, and in their efforts to transform their local area into a trendy neighbourhood. However, while they may talk of vibrant communities, they live behind locked gates as they discuss starting a family. 

Director Igan Haguel cleverly subverts audience expectations with a cutting dissection of wealth liberalism, privilege and gentrification. Here we find a gay couple who are far from being the victims of the piece as themes of immigration, police brutality, and race take centre stage. Haguel’s film isn’t afraid to uncover the uncomfortable truth behind many elite liberal values; they are spoken passionately but rarely practised.

It would be easy to label Melissa Lesh and Trevor Frost’s beautiful and tender documentary as a classic tale of healing, but Wildcat is much more. This is the story of a young army veteran who fought in Afghanistan and two lost and lonely ocelots. Both the wildcats and the young man at the heart of the film, who has ventured across the world to protect them, are lost in a world that is often unforgiving and harsh. Can hope and rebirth be found in the deep jungles of Peru?

Wildcat is a tender, intimate, and beautiful exploration of life, loss, love, and longing that never sugarcoats the journey of Harry, Samantha, and their endangered wildcats, Khan and Keanu. It is the story of the deep connection between humans and our unique and diverse natural world, and the power of our animal kingdom to offer a paw of friendship and hope

On a secluded island, a spikey house manager and a reclusive and famous chef greet a small group of wealthy individuals. They have all come to experience a world-class menu that is more theatre than food. But as the night progresses, the menu becomes a deliciously dark game of no escape. Mark Mylod’s wicked satire takes no time to take a huge bite out of the world of haute cuisine as we watch Ralph Fiennes’ cold and deranged chef, Julian Slowik, turn from ‘MasterChef’ into a malevolent and merciless maitre d’.

Written and directed by William Stone, The Fence builds on his 2018 short film of the same name in a coming-of-age tale of brotherly love, motorbikes, friendship, and crime. At its core, this simple story of a boy and his stolen motorbike may appear too simplistic for the one hour and thirty-minute runtime it consumes, but Stone’s film is far more than an exploration of community justice on the streets of Bristol; it’s a love letter to friendship, brotherhood and community that shines through the performances of its young cast.

It’s clear from the outset that The Fence was a labour of love for the director, producer and crew; the attention to detail is exquisite, and the screenplay oozes charm. But even more impressive is that Stone only graduated in 2017.